He must have known I was an hour's drive away.  He showed up at the house yesterday when I wasn't here.  He knew that for every tear he causes my daughter I cause a drop of his blood to be spilled.  I've been watching very closely and haven't seen any tears yet.  She's sad, but not crying (at least when I have seen it).  She's an extremely stoic person.  I should have told him a drop of blood for every frown...

Ry saw it prerelease and so did Kevin.  James and I went to the first showing in the area and got back about an hour ago.  It was very good.  James had a few nits to pick but I shot down most of those.  I had one nit to pick and James shot it down.  As expected with anything that Joss Whedon helps write is going to have some great dialog.  This was no exception.  Jayne, as usual, is so incredibly self centered and delivers his lines with such timing and such a straight face that the audience bursts into laughter.  I think my favorite was when someone (trying to avoid spoiling it for someone) says:

Someone: "Do you really think any of us are going to get out of this alive?"
Jayne (looks around, pauses): "I might."

My favorite lines of the movie were the following (as best I can remember):

Someone 1: "If I had known this was going to happen I would have done things differently.  Back on the ship I would have been with you."
Someone 2: "Are you saying... sex?"
Someone 1: "That's what I'm saying."
Someone 2: "To hell with dying.  I'm going to live."

In another sequence:

Someone 1: "Landing could be interesting."
Someone 2: "Define interesting."
Someone 1: "Oh god, oh god, we're all gonna die?"

This is a "Space Western".  It's a good one.  Lots of guns and blades and a good message.  And as Kevin said in his review:

Go see Serenity. You won't be disappointed if you like this blog.

Ry posted a link to a picture with three deer in it.  I could only find one.  Here is a picture Barb and I took last month while in Montana.  There are two deer in this picture.  One is obvious the other not so obvious.  We only saw it because it moved.

Click on the picture for a high resolution version.  Hint on the second deer: It's a buck and it's laying down.

Yesterday I stumbled across a well worn path where no humans would have a reason to be frequently walking.  It must be a game trail I thought.  Without expecting to find any animals there during the middle of the day I walked along the path for probably only 50 feet before two white-tailed deer burst out from under a tree 30 or 40 feet away, ran down the hill, across the draw, and out of sight over the next hill.  The trail had led me directly to where they were bedded down.  It was right next to a wheat field.  They probably were grain fed, foliage or actually grain, all summer.

On the way home, about five miles from that same location, I saw two more deer.  I suspect I could have harvested one of them with my van had I been willing to trade the van for a few dozen pounds of meat (not a good trade).

Hunting season opens in 10 days.  Prospects look good at this point.

I went to the Boomershoot site yesterday.  I spent the morning rearranging the Taj Mahal and managed to get all but about 100 pounds of the ammonium nitrate inside.  On the drive home I realized I could get the remaining AN inside as well.  I'll do that the next time I go back.  I also cleaned up some spots that had rusted due to chemical spills and made changes such that spills will be much less likely to get on the metal in the future.

In the afternoon I started doing my experiments with reactive targets.  I did six different experiments.  I was able to determine a 1 3/8" thick target is no less sensitive than a 3" thick target.  In each and every test the 1 3/8" thick target detonated with the same cartridge and at the same range (and in one case at a more distance range) than the 3" thick target.  That is great news.  This allows me to use larger shooting area targets without exceeding the neighbors tolerance for the house walls being shaken. 

In experiments one and two I couldn't reliably detonate the targets even at 10 yards distant with .22LR Stinger ammo.  With over ten hits at 10 yards I only got one detonation.  Examination revealed burn without the boom.  Black soot was around the entrance and sometimes the exit hole in the target.  The .223 detonated the targets on the first shot.  In experiment one I used the same chemical ratios as used for Boomershoot 2005 where we could usually detonate the targets with the same .22 rifle and ammo at 20 yards.  At 20 yards the bullet velocity is about 1500 fps and at 10 yards it is about 1550.  Something was different--I had introduced another variable and I knew what it was.  It was how I mixed the chemicals.  I made a change and in experiment three was able to detonate the targets on the first shot from 25 yards.  At 25 yards the velocity is about 1475 fps.

If a little of that is good, then how about a lot of that?  Experiment four--I moved the variable to it's limit.  At 25 yards the targets detonated on the first shot.  Experiment five used the same mixing proceedure but I shot from 40 yards away with an estimated bullet velocity of 1400 fps.  One shot one boom.  Experiment six, same mixing proceedure and I switched to a different ammo.  American Eagle with a muzzle velocity of about 1200 fps.  Four hits at 20 yards with an estimated velocity at the target of 1150 resulted in burn but no boom.  At 12 yards I got one shot one boom and my thin plastic apron was perforated by small particles. I heard and felt particles bounce off my safety glasses.  My legs, being without the body armor, stung from multiple hits and still have red marks 12 hours later.  The pain didn't matter.  The targets reliable detonated with an estimated target velocity of 1170 fps.

I made up another five targets and put them in storage for long range testing with the .223.  If .223 bullets will detonate the targets at the same velocity as the .22LR bullets and storing the targets for a few days doesn't adversely affect the sensitivity then we may be able to detonate targets with a .223 at 700 yards.

Americans may like guns because they were reminiscent of the smell of outdoors, military heroism, the intensity of the hunt or merely because they are fascinated by the finely machined metal parts. Maybe the origin of a gun speaks of history; maybe the gun makes a man's home seem to him less vulnerable; maybe these feelings are more justified in the country than in the city; but, above all, many of us believe that these feelings are a man's own business and need not be judged by the Department of the Treasury or the Department of Justice.

Samuel Cummings

Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human.  At best he is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear shoes, bathe, and not make messes in the house.

Lazarus Long
A character in "Time Enough for Love" by Robert Heinlein
[Applicable to those anti-freedom, gun hating people that say "I don't believe numbers" or "I never trust statistics".  -- Joe]

According to the UK Times Online:

Iraqis have reacted furiously to the three-year jail sentence imposed on Lynndie England, the US soldier pictured holding a naked Iraqi inmate on a leash at Abu Ghraib prison, provoking outrage across the world.

England, 22, was convicted on six counts of abuse while working as a prison guard, but was acquitted of a charge of conspiracy.

Last night she was jailed and dishonourably discharged from the US Army, but ordinary Iraqis said that it was not enough. They said the sentence exposed American hypocrisy, as it would have been more harsh had she been convicted of abusing Americans.

...

Iraqis were particularly incensed by the picture of England holding an inmate on a leash like a dog, a degrading act because Muslims regard dogs as unclean. In Iraq's male-dominated society the idea of men being abused by a woman was said to be particularly humiliating.

 

Where are all the "furious" Iraqis over all the beheadings, bombings, and the executions of politicians and teachers in Iraq?  Do they not exist?  Or do they just not exist in the reality of the UK Times?

England stepped over the line in terms of handling of prisoners and is going to jail.  But as crimes go there one has to keep in mind there are a lot of people that will pay to be treated like that.  Not so with the treatment our enemies are dishing out to innocent people all over the world.  I don't approve of what England did but once she has paid her debt to society (three years seems more than adequate to me) I'm hoping she can become a productive member of society.  Perhaps she can utilize her fame and experience in the alternate entertainment industry.

On Monday I bought my hunting license and a tag for a white-tailed deer.  This will be the first time I go hunting.  I never really had an interest and in some ways I still don't.  I harvested a deer a couple years ago--while driving Barb's Jeep.  The meat was very lean and quite good.  There was no gamy taste as the deer was grain feed off of the local crops.  But Barb, for some reason, can't stand the smell of even the meat cooking in the house when she is there.  Kim and James (my two oldest kids) liked it though.  Xenia, being a vegetarian, has no interest.

A good part of the reason I got the license and tag is because they are so plentiful on the farm they are pests.  They destroy the crops.  Helping my brother to thin the herd a little bit will help him out.  It looks like I will have more time this year so I can hunt during week days and not just weekends.  If I get something I'll be giving a good portion of the meat to my two oldest kids.  Hunting season opens October 10th.

I heard it on the radio yesterday while reloading ammo.  It's on the web now:

Idaho 55 at the Rainbow Bridge was closed for about six hours Tuesday after a suspicious object was found underneath the bridge.

An ITD spokesman said investigators were conducting a routine bridge safety inspection around 9:30 a.m. today when they saw an object they could not identify. It was a green bucket with wires poking out.

Idaho State Police and the Boise Bomb Squad were called in to investigate and 17 miles of highway was closed. Investigators determined the bucket was filled with trinkets, photos and toys placed there as part of an online scavenger hunt called geocache. Players use a global positioning system to find the treasure.

Police say the man who stashed the object under the bridge has come forward and charges might be filed against him.

As it was said in a geocaching forum:

Consider. If all it takes to shut down the country is to toss ducted tape tupperware full of rocks with an old radio in it out the side of your window while you are driving down the interstate, then it won't be long before terrorists start causing disruption in a mass scale by doing exactly that. 

There are an almost infinite number of things we can't and shouldn't defend against.  Money is better spend attacking the root of the problem--extremist Muslims.  We must destroy their culture.

Occasionally I'm surprised at how far the anti-freedom people will take things.  The banning of certain types of clothes took me by surprise.  That Gun Guys (anti-gun website) would suggest there is no such thing as justifiable homicide almost surprises me, but not quite.  In order maintain internal consistency they have to conclude that one life is just as valuable as any other life.  And so we end up with drivel like this:

What exactly is a “justifiable” homicide? Is it OK to kill people sometimes and not others.

And from their newsletter which doesn't appear to be their website there is this:

For whatever reason, killing another human being, an act made simple and easy by firearms, is an act not lightly taken, and not without consequences.  Though a killing may be considered "legal" by any number of laws, that doesn't necessarily make it right, and doesn't mean that we should broaden laws without regard for those consequences.

Anyone that has taken any firearms self-defense class will have been exposed to the downside of using deadly force to defend innocent life.  The taking of a life is serious stuff.  But sometimes it's the best of the available options.  And when the legal use of deadly force is employed the person on the receiving end of that deadly force made the choices that triggered the use of the deadly force.  It is they that bear the ultimate responsibility for their own injury or death.  For the "Gun Guys" to even hint that there is not a time and a place for the use of deadly force in the defense of innocent life shows how completely disconnected from reality they really are.  The last sentence of their email only seals that forgone conclusion.  I'm not surprised:

Legal or not, like anything else involved with firearms, "justifiable homicides" lead to more violence and pain.

If I were mad enough at someone to kill them I wouldn't use a gun.  They might wink out on me before I wanted them to.  I would want them to know who it was and I would want them to feel the pain.

Eric Engstrom
[Probably said sometime in '96 or '97.  I responded by saying "I wouldn't use a gun either.  I'd use a propane torch and a wire brush." -- Joe]

Last week I ordered some new boxes for possible use as reactive target containers for Boomershoot 2006.  They arrived today.  This year there were some indications the targets were failing to detonate because of they were very thin (some of them were only one inch thick).  The new ones have inside dimensions of 6" x 6" x 3".  I'll be doing some tests soon.  Perhaps this week sometime.  Or if I get an email from someone that wants to help out I might do the tests on an upcoming weekend if that would work out better for someone.

I spent part of the weekend cleaning out enough of the garage to make a path to my reloading bench and finding enough of my stuff to reload some 40 S&W ammo.  I reloaded about 50 rounds yesterday and 400 today.  There is an IPSC match next Sunday and I needed some ammo.

I'm expecting I will have some bad news to report soon.  I can't really talk about it until it shows up in the papers.  I've been depressed enough lately and this only makes things worse.  I really should go make some explosives and detonate it at both "entertainingly close" and long range just to get me out of my depression.

Those who have command of the arms in a country are masters of the state, and have it in their power to make what revolutions they please. [Thus,] there is no end to observations on the difference between the measures likely to be pursued by a minister backed by a standing army, and those of a court awed by the fear of an armed people.

Aristotle
Quoted by John Trenchard and Walter Moyle
"An Argument showing That a Standing Army is Inconsistent with a Free Government, and Absolutely Destructive to the Constitution of the English Monarchy."

More news on the airport insecurity front.  Bruce Schneier was on the working group that reviewed the plans for the TSA database to match passengers with names on the Watch List and the No-Fly List.  As usual Bruce asks questions they can't answer without confirming they don't have a clue about security.  The basic questions are in the report and are repeated on his blog.  Here is a taste:

The SFWG found that TSA has failed to answer certain key questions about Secure Flight: First and foremost, TSA has not articulated what the specific goals of Secure Flight are. Based on the limited test results presented to us, we cannot assess whether even the general goal of evaluating passengers for the risk they represent to aviation security is a realistic or feasible one or how TSA proposes to achieve it. We do not know how much or what kind of personal information the system will collect or how data from various sources will flow through the system.

Again, "TSA has not articulated what the specific goals of Secure Flight are."  That's absurd.  How many billions have we spent on airplane security since 9/11?  However much it has been it was all wasted if they can't answer that simple question.  It's time to reevaluate airplane security methods.

Bruce winds up with the story of a commercial pilot that was put on the no fly list--which means he can't work and he can't find out why.  He summarizes with:

Remember what the no-fly list is. It's a list of people who are so dangerous that they can't be allowed to board an airplane under any circumstances, yet so innocent that they can't be arrested -- even under the provisions of the PATRIOT Act.

The policy of the American Government is to leave their citizens free, neither restraining them, nor aiding them in their pursuits.

Thomas Jefferson

World War is the second worst activity of mankind, the worst being acquiescence in slavery.

William F. Buckley, Jr.
On the Right

As civil rulers, not having their duty to the people duly before them, may attempt to tyrannize, and as the military forces which must be occasionally raised to defend our country, might pervert their power to the injury of their fellow citizens, the people are confirmed by the article in their right to keep and bear their private arms.

Tench Coxe
1755–1824

From a KABA alert:

FEDERAL JUDGE HALTS NEW ORLEANS GUN SEIZURES

BELLEVUE, WA – The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana this afternoon issued a temporary restraining order on behalf of the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) and National Rifle Association (NRA), bringing an end to firearm seizures from citizens living in and around New Orleans.

District Judge Jay Zainey issued the restraining order against all parties named in a lawsuit filed Thursday by SAF and NRA. Defendants in the lawsuit include New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin and Police Chief Edwin Compass III.

“This is a great victory, not just for the NRA and SAF, but primarily for law-abiding gun owners everywhere,” said SAF founder Alan M. Gottlieb. “We are proud to have joined forces with the NRA to put an end to what has amounted to a warrantless gun grab by authorities in New Orleans and surrounding jurisdictions.

“Over the past three weeks,” he continued, “residents who had lost virtually everything in the devastation following Hurricane Katrina had also essentially been stripped of something even more precious, their civil rights, and their right of self-defense, because of these gun seizures.

“SAF and NRA had no alternative but to take action,” Gottlieb added. “If these gun confiscations had been allowed to continue without challenge, it would have set a dangerous precedent that would have encouraged authorities in other jurisdictions to believe they also could suspend the civil rights of citizens in the event of some other emergency.

“What must happen now, and quickly,” said Gottlieb, “is for authorities in the New Orleans area to explain how they will return all of those firearms to their rightful owners, and do it promptly. What this ruling affirms is that even in the face of great natural disasters, governments cannot arbitrarily deprive citizens of their rights. Thanks to some great teamwork between SAF and the NRA, this sort of thing will hopefully never happen again.”

PS Click here to make a contribution to help fund this lawsuit.

It's just a small step.  But it's certainly a step in the right direction.  From here we need to proceed to get one more more convictions on charges stemming for the violation of laws such as these:

18 USC 241

If two or more persons conspire to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any person in any State, Territory, Commonwealth, Possession, or District in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States, or because of his having so exercised the same; or

 

If two or more persons go in disguise on the highway, or on the premises of another, with intent to prevent or hinder his free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege so secured—

 

They shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; and if death results from the acts committed in violation of this section or if such acts include kidnapping or an attempt to kidnap, aggravated sexual abuse or an attempt to commit aggravated sexual abuse, or an attempt to kill, they shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for any term of years or for life, or both, or may be sentenced to death.

18 USC 242

Whoever, under color of any law, statute, ordinance, regulation, or custom, willfully subjects any person in any State, Territory, Commonwealth, Possession, or District to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured or protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States, or to different punishments, pains, or penalties, on account of such person being an alien, or by reason of his color, or race, than are prescribed for the punishment of citizens, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both; and if bodily injury results from the acts committed in violation of this section or if such acts include the use, attempted use, or threatened use of a dangerous weapon, explosives, or fire, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; and if death results from the acts committed in violation of this section or if such acts include kidnapping or an attempt to kidnap, aggravated sexual abuse, or an attempt to commit aggravated sexual abuse, or an attempt to kill, shall be fined under this title, or imprisoned for any term of years or for life, or both, or may be sentenced to death.

It's a stretch, but if someone lost their life due to these jerks confiscating their firearms then some bigots could be facing the death penalty.

See also:

SAF and the NRA to file suit
SAF needs New Orleans info
Searching for survivors
This is the way it will always happen

See also: Random Nuclear Strikes.

I got a call from the FBI this morning.  It wasn't anything I can really talk about here or anything that might have adverse effects for me or my friends.  He said my name sounded familiar, "Did you call our office last week?".  Nope.  I have never called their office.  As our conversatiion progressed his voice and his name gradually fell into place for me.  It turned out I have shot at IPSC matches with him occasionally.  I remember him as smart and somewhat intense.  He's a pretty good shooter too.  Small world...

We have a blogger up and running full speed over at the Nation of Rifleman.  He calls himself The Gun Guy.  He immediately got added to the blogroll.  This is no relation whatsoever to Gun Guys which is very anti-gun.

See also my post Nation of Riflemen is up now.

Thanks to Analog Kid at Random Nuclear Strikes for the heads up.

I don't understand how they can say this without causing their head to explode:

Currie has been a strong advocate for civil liberties and women's rights in the state legislature. She also has pushed for major reforms in the state's property tax-reliant funding of public schools. Additionally, she's been a leading advocate for gun control and an opponent of the death penalty.

[Emphasis added. -- Joe]

It makes just as much sense as if the following occurred:

• NAACP advocated white supremacy
• ADL advocated children joining Hitler youth groups
• HRC advocated stronger sodomy laws

Why doesn't the press laugh them them all the way to the funny farm?

I just heard on the radio there is two feet of water from hurricane Rita in parts of New Orleans as water over-topped one of the levees.

They really need to give it up.  Let it be an archaeological site for future generations.  New Orleans might recover from this battle and the next, but the war will be lost along with resources that would be better invested in a new city.

See also:

Another shot at New Orleans
Now do you believe me?
New Orleans was most vulnerable major city to hurricanes
More levee info

Information is the oxygen of the modern age.  It seeps through the walls topped by barbed wire, it wafts across the electrified borders.

Ronald Reagan
Guardian (London, 14 June 1989)

The connection between my ISP and Sprint to the Internet went down about 30 minutes ago.  Less than half the people in Moscow can reach my websites, the rest of the world will just have to get by without them somehow until the connection is restored.  Last time this happened it was a fiber optic cable that was severed by some construction north of Moscow.

Update 12:00: From our ISP's website:

Line to the Internet is Down
Starting around 8:20 this morning, our Sprint backbone to the Internet went down.  Sprint long distance and cell phones are also down.  Sprint is aware of this problem and is working on it.  9/22/05 9:00 a.m.

11:11 a.m.  We heard scuttlebutt from a usually reliable source that the fiber optic line near Worley was cut, and that they expect it to be back up by noon.

There is a bunch of highway construction going on all along state highway 95.  Worley is on 95 north of Moscow.

Update 13:00: From our IPS's website:

12:40 p.m.  Nope.  No additional word.

Update 14:05: From our IPS's website:

1:50 p.m.  Verizon says the fiber should be repaired by 2:30.

Update 15:54 From our IPS's website (heavy sigh):

3:50 p.m.  Nope.

Update from the Lewiston Morning Tribune:

Long-distance phone service cut in area

Several communities in Latah, Nez Perce and Clearwater counties lost their long-distance telephone service Thursday morning when an underground line was cut by an Idaho Transportation Department crew near Worley, Idaho.

According to Kevin Laverty, a Verizon media relations spokesman, most Idaho long-distance customers south of the cut line to around Orofino were without service until about 4 p.m. when repairs had been completed.

Affected towns included Moscow, Peck and Orofino, according to Laverty.

Barb woke me up at 2:08 this morning to report the electricity was off.  No electricity, no clock, no getting up at the right time to go to work.  I offered her the alarm clock on my cellphone and discovered a text message from Ry sent at 0:35:05, "Network down?"  That meant the battery backup had failed on our websites sometime prior to that.  I went outside and looked around.  The nearest lights I could see were about a mile away.  No need to report it then since there were lots of people without power.  I replied to Ry and we sent a couple messages back and forth. 

Power came back up at about 3:10.  Everything appears to be normal at the Huffman-Scott home and websites now.

Update from the Lewiston Morning Tribune:

Moscow residents hit by power outage

MOSCOW -- The city of Moscow was hit with a double-whammy by loss of service from two utilities Thursday.

First it suffered a power outage, which began late Wednesday night. Then its long-distance service was disrupted, along with several north central Idaho communities, Thursday (see story below).

Electrical service was knocked out shortly after 11:30 p.m., affecting more than 6,000 Avista Utilities customers, ranging from the Washington state line to one or two miles east, north and west of Moscow.

According to Debbie Simock, a spokeswoman from Avista, the blackout was caused by equipment failure at a substation in the area.

Avista rerouted some switches, bringing power back on for some customers, including Gritman Medical Center, by 1 a.m., Simock said. The rest of the affected areas had power by 3 a.m.

A verbal contract isn't worth the paper it's written on.

Samuel Goldwyn

For those who are not members or have a bad email address with them.  "Under new management":

http://www.thenationofriflemen.com

From a Keep and Bear Arms alert I just received.  Tomorrow morning they will file suit:

SAF, NRA ASK FEDERAL COURT TO HALT NEW ORLEANS GUN SEIZURES

BATON ROUGE, LA (Sept. 22) – The Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) and National Rifle Association (NRA) joined with individual gun owners in Louisiana Thursday morning, filing a motion in United States District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana seeking a temporary restraining order to stop authorities in and around the City of New Orleans from seizing firearms from private citizens in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

Click here to make a contribution to help fund this lawsuit.

Arbitrary gun seizures, without warrant or probable cause, have been reported during the past three weeks since the Crescent City was devastated by the hurricane. In cases reported to SAF, police refused to give citizens receipts for their seized firearms. Earlier, SAF insisted that police account for all seized firearms, disclose their whereabouts, and explain how they will be returned to their rightful owners. Authorities have not responded.

Gun confiscations have been highly publicized since the New York Times quoted New Orleans Police Superintendent P. Edwin Compass III, who said, "Only law enforcement are allowed to have weapons," and ABC News quoted Deputy Police Chief Warren Riley stating, "No one will be able to be armed. We are going to take all the weapons."

For example, a San Francisco, CA camera crew from KTVU filmed one incident in which visiting California Highway Patrol officers tackled an elderly woman identified as Patricia Konie, to seize her pistol and forcibly remove her from her home. An ABC news crew accompanying an Oklahoma National Guard unit filmed another incident in which homeowners were handcuffed and disarmed, then released but without their firearms.

"We are delighted to work jointly with the NRA in an effort to bring these outrageous gun seizures to a halt," said SAF founder Alan M. Gottlieb. "Our inquiries about these confiscations were cavalierly ignored, as were our demands for a public explanation from the police and city officials about why citizens were being unlawfully disarmed, leaving them defenseless against lingering bands of looters and thugs.

"New Orleans officials left us with no recourse," Gottlieb observed. "It was bad enough that Big Easy residents were victims of the worst natural disaster in the nation's history. That they would be subsequently victimized by their own local government, taking their personal property without warrant, is unconscionable. These illegal gun seizures must be stopped, now."

Today I checked on the status of a couple of the "blunt instruments" I'm using on Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.  Since I hadn't heard back on them for weeks I sort of guessed they had been dropped and I wasn't going to get anywhere with them.  I was wrong.

The first person I talked to said the issue was still VERY much alive it was just that he had been buried in stuff and was reluctant to share the work load with others.  He has a couple of hard deadlines to meet and couldn't work on it this minute.  My project had received some attention a couple days ago and would be getting more attention soon.  I felt pretty good about things.  He asked a few more good questions which I gave short answers to and then followed up with detailed email answers.

The second person I talked to said I had gone about things in the wrong manner.  No big deal--the person in the appropriate channel will be contacting me soon.  I got the feeling that it wouldn't have happened if I hadn't called back twice to find out the story.  I was very pleased with this.  I was afraid I would just be told to "go away."  That could still happen but at least I believe I will get a chance to present my findings and have a reasonable chance of convincing them to take action.

One "blunt instrument" should be in there hands by now.  That is the appeal of their denial of my Privacy Act request on all the information they have in their files, email, etc. about the "investigation" they did on me.  I hired a lawyer in D.C. that specializes in FOIA/Privacy Act requests.  They claimed the Privacy Act didn't apply to them, but both my and the lawyer's read of the Act is that it specifically says it applies to contractors that perform a government agency function--so "hand it over!"  Nothing back on the appeal yet.

And since PNNL has received the FOIA request I talked about the other day by now I might as well reveal it here.  I asked for:

---

A list of all Pacific Northwest National Laboratory computer programs that use the FlashTek software library or rely on derivations of the FlashTek software library and/or it's source code.

A list, complete with contact information, of all PNNL customers and contacts that have copies of those programs.

Most, perhaps all, of these programs will have been produced in the Cyber Security Group at PNNL.  The source code can be easily identified by a copyright notice similar to the following:

/////////////////////////
// Copyright FlashTek
// Joe Huffman
// Joe@joehuffman.org
/////////////////////////

---

In case the name "FlashTek" doesn't mean anything to you, that is the name I use for all my private business stuff.  From software to explosives FlashTek is my dba (Doing Business As) name.  To speed up development of several projects at PNNL my coworkers and I used some of my previously developed code. PNNL never bothered to obtain a written license for that and I never bothered to ask for one. The implied threat with the FOIA request is that I will now ask for a license and/or demand they and all their customers stop using my previously developed software. This is a really nasty thing to do and I don't really want to do it. If they would give me all the information I asked for via the Privacy Act request then I, almost for certain, would not bring up the software license issue.

There is one more "blunt instrument" that I haven't checked up on.  I'll just wait a while for that one.

Previous posts:

Blunt instrument number five
Case blown open--maybe
Reconsideration

The second printing of this book is coming out next month.  For gun geeks this is a great book.  Lots of math and experimental results to back up the theory.  I have a copy of the first printing someplace.  I got it probably 7 or 8 years ago and immediately went out and did some of my own experiments to verify things.  The results looked good.  From the web page:

Bullet Penetration describes the analysis and testing of a model of bullet penetration dynamics; this model  is a significant technical advance over what has been heretofore available.  This penetration model is directly related to understanding the production of an incapacitating wound by the bullet parameters (velocity, weight, shape, diameter).  Incapacitation from wound trauma is a complex subject that has been controversial for many decades, and all aspects of this subject are discussed in detail in Bullet Penetration.  The new results in this book are described in a style and vocabulary that make the basic principles and results understandable to the layman.  This outstanding book should be read by everyone who is critically dependent on handgun bullet performance as well as all those with an interest in any aspect of wound ballistics.

The topics covered in Bullet Penetration include physiological and psychological effects in incapacitation from wound trauma, modeling of bullet penetration, and modeling of bullet expansion.  The realities associated with the desired "one shot stop" and the ignorance and/or fraud in "combat data" claims are discussed in detail.  The primary focus is on handgun ammunition, but the principles and many of the results are also applicable to rifle ammunition.  The book has 303 pages, including 69 pages of bullet photographs and graphs of test results.

Xenia's boyfriend John came over to visit yesterday afternoon.  Xenia and her John were looking at stuff on the computer and didn't seem to be needing any of my attention so I laid down to take a short nap.  I awoke to find the my legs on the edge of the couch separating the dogs, who were on the floor, from a half grown cat I had never seen before on the couch.  The dogs were extremely interested in the cat bug weren't big enough to jump over my legs onto the couch to make contact with the cat.  The cat seemed content with this arrangement.  My thought was, "This must be the cat Xenia's John said he was going to get for his sister.  Okay, I'll be the 'castle wall' for the cat.  I need to be careful not to crush it by moving my legs quickly."  Xenia and her John were on the other side of the room talking in whispers and I didn't pay them any attention as I tried to go back to sleep.  Xenia then told me in a normal voice, "I updated my Live Journal".  "Okay", I said, "I'll look at it later when I get up."  After a minute or two Xenia asked, "Do you like the cat?"  "Sure, it seems to be a nice cat."  What did it matter to me?  I probably would never see it again after her John gave it to his sister.  A few more minutes passed.  "Can she stay?  Her name is Zandra."  "No.", was my immediate reply.  Why would she ask that?  This cat is for her John's sister.  Probably 30 minutes later I got up and went downstairs to my computer.  I found this Live Journal posting from Xenia.  Zandra was a birthday present to Xenia from her John.

To make a long story short Barb and I ended up giving her three choices:

1. She could keep her cat or she could keep her John (only mentioned to get her attention of how serious we were).
2. We would call her John's parents and explain that John had not asked US about Xenia getting another cat.  They would be asked to come and get the cat.
3. She could take trigonometry next year and do really good job and not complain about hating math (she dropped it on the second day of class this year).

She chose option 3 amid apologies and tears.  We weren't and aren't upset with Xenia but her John really stepped into it.  That was a major blunder on his part.

She is a nice cat.  She is laying on my lap purring as I type this...

Update: It turns out Xenia asked her John to not ask us if she could have the cat.  It appears John wasn't the "bad guy" here.  More consultation with Barb is needed before we partake on a final course of action.  Xenia got herself into trouble on this one.

Xenia renamed the cat "Zanitia".  I'm thinking perhaps it should be "Xenia's Folly", or perhaps "Albatross".

No one has the right to destroy another person's belief by demanding empirical evidence.

Ann Landers
Nationally syndicated advice columnist and Director of Handgun Control, Inc.
[I would claim than in matters that adversely affect other people one has the obligation to demand empirical evidence.  But so many moonbats agree with Landers philosophy that it is rather depressing at times.  -- Joe]

The annual Gun Rights Policy Conference is this weekend.  If I had a job and it wasn't in California (spit, spit) I would have seriously considered going.  I was a speaker at GRPC 1999 and 2000 and was very impressed with the entire event.  I just received this Keep and Bear Arms alert:

WATCH LIVE FEED FROM GUN RIGHTS POLICY CONFERENCE

BELLEVUE, WA – Gun rights activists unable to attend this weekend's 20th annual Gun Rights Policy Conference in Los Angeles can still get in on the action via a live internet video feed from the event, according to Alan M. Gottlieb, founder of the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) and chairman of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (CCRKBA).

Gottlieb announced today that by visiting the SAF website at www.saf.org, the CCRKBA website at www.ccrkba.org, or KeepAndBearArms.com, and clicking on the link, activists may watch the action unfold on their computer screen.

The live feed is being accomplished through the courtesy of the Freedom Broadcast Network, both Saturday and Sunday.

In addition to Gottlieb, scheduled to appear during the conference are U.S. Senator Larry Craig (R-ID), National Rifle Association President Sandra Froman, NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre, SAF President Joseph Tartaro, UCLA Law Prof. Eugene Volokh, national syndicated talk radio hosts Larry Elder, Michael Reagan, author and Professor John Lott of the American Enterprise Institute, Larry Pratt with Gun Owners of America; John Burtt, chairman of the Fifty Caliber Shooters' Institute; Dr. Timothy Wheeler, director of Doctors for Responsible Gun Ownership, and many others.

Cool.  Very cool.  You won't get a chance to do all the networking (I met Stephanie at GRPC 2000--she does all the publicity for Boomershoot) but you will get a chance to listen to some awesome speakers.

My wife, Barbara, is a physical therapist who specializes in "home health".  She drives all over the county to see her patients.  She works with others who do speech therapists, occupational therapy, and nursing.  Many of the patients are on Medicaid/Medicare so in many cases there is government payment for the services.  The Danes have a new branch of government supported therapy which the government is also paying for.  The next time she complains about her job I'll suggest she could change her therapy modalities and perhaps go into private practice in Denmark.  On second thought, that probably wouldn't be a very good suggestion to make.  Via Clayton Cramer:

Danes take care of disabled to new level

Danish activists for the disabled are staunchly defending a government campaign that pays sex workers to provide sex once a month for disabled people.

Opposition parties call the program, officially known as ''Sex, irrespective of disability,'' immoral.

''We spend a large proportion of our taxes rescuing women from prostitution. But at the same time we officially encourage carers to help contact with prostitutes,'' said Social-Democrat spokesperson Kristen Brosboel.

Responded Stig Langvad of the country's Disabled Association: ''The disabled must have the same possibilities as other people. Politicians can debate whether prostitution should be allowed in general, instead of preventing only the disabled from having access to it.''

Mandatory reading if you plan to spend some time in Thailand or those of you who think working on the holy day, Friday, is no big deal.  From Jihad Watch with the complete article on Sign On San Diego:

PATTANI, Thailand – The open-air market in this southern Thai city falls eerily quiet on Fridays. Most vendors stay home, terrorized by leaflets threatening to kill or cut off the ears of anyone who works on the Muslim holy day.

After 20 months of insurgent violence, the no-work threat has driven another nail into what is becoming an economic coffin in Thailand's terrorized southern provinces.

...

Among the hundreds killed in the predominantly Muslim provinces of Pattani, Yala and Narathiwat are police and soldiers, but police records show that 80 percent are civilians – rubber tappers, shopkeepers, civil servants, construction workers and ice cream vendors.

Bombs have exploded at a department store, a cinema complex, the international airport at Hat Yai and a department store owned by the French Carrefour chain. Now investors and tourists have been driven off and some workers are leaving.

...

Soaring demand, driven by the booming Chinese economy, has doubled rubber's price on the global market, but production in Pattani province has plummeted to a tenth of its volume in just a year, according to official statistics.

...

Prices of quarried rock have doubled, because the government severely limited the use of explosives that were reportedly being stolen for bomb attacks. The government eased the curbs as part of efforts to revive the economy, but Defense Minister Thammarak Isarangura Na Ayutthaya, while warily approving the measure, said he expected coffins would have to be stockpiled for bomb victims.

I might be about to adjust to not working on Friday, but severe restrictions on explosives?  Now they've done it!  We we have no viable options but to destroy the extremist Muslim culture world wide.

On probably the second day of class this year Xenia told me she needed ten minutes of video to take into her English class that would "get people talking."  She asked me for suggestions.  It's 58 minutes, not 10, but we came up with Innocents Betrayed.  She said she could just select 10 minutes of the video to show.  We watched it together and timed various segments.  She decided just the first ten minutes would work.  I wanted her to skip one of the genocides and show the part about the kids in California who were killed by a guy with a pitchfork in their home.  All the kids knew how to shoot but couldn't get access to any of the guns because California state law requires "safe storage" to keep guns away from unsupervised kids.  But it was Xenia's decision and she figured showing a few more million dead because of gun control would be sufficient to start people talking without getting into little kids with hundreds of stab wounds.

Her class should be over by now and I haven't got any calls from the school to pick her up so my guess is things couldn't have gone too badly for her.  I'll update this posting later today when I get a full report from her.

Next on our list of projects is to take my picture from the fair and the KING 5 Boomershoot video to her chemistry teacher and suggest a field trip on "exothermic reactions".  In an "isn't it a small world" twist her chemistry teacher's husband supplies the portable toilets each year for Boomershoot.  Also, Barb and I graduated from Orofino High School with him.

Update 1: Xenia called a few minutes ago on another topic and I asked how the English class went.  She said when she turned off the video it was silent for 30 seconds.  They didn't know what to say.  She didn't have much time and I'll get a further update after school.  She seem pretty happy with the results though.

Update 2: Xenia reported most people didn't talk.  The instructor didn't commit himself either way.  Many of the kids didn't get the connection between lack of guns and genocide, "The government would have just done it anyway."  One suggested that taking of the guns was as much a symbolic thing as much as anything, "Maybe because they didn't have guns they were more likely to feel helpless."  Even if they weren't totally convinced at least they had some doubt put in their minds about the wisdom of gun control.  Video can be a much more powerful media than the written word and JPFO did a great job on this video, although I do agree that the "gun-control enables genocide" could have been expressed better than just giving examples of when that happened.  They should also of said that genocide has never happened without there being gun control in place.  And more examples of where a relatively small number of private citizens with guns saved themselves (or at least significantly delayed their demise) from government sponsored murder would be welcomed.

I remember attending a party once where most people did not know who I was and where I worked at the time (a contractor for Microsoft).  I was just sort of hanging out and listening (that's really active for me, often I just find a place to take a nap if I have to go to a party).  This woman started talking about how selfish rich people are and how they should be made to be more generous.  "So", I asked, "What is your source of data for the claim that rich people are selfish?"  I know, that was a below the belt punch on a defenseless communist as per the following:

No one has the right to destroy another person's belief by demanding empirical evidence.

Ann Landers, nationally syndicated advice columnist and Director of Handgun Control, Inc.

But being the scientist/engineer and generally socially clueless type I asked anyway.  The response was, "Do you have any evidence they are not?"  That was actually a fairly decent response--had I not been working at Microsoft for several years and knew many multi-millionaires.  Other people could have mentioned numerous famous foundations and philanthropists but I chose to give examples I had witnessed.  I told of going to Denny's in Bellevue, a short distance from Microsoft, with other people form Microsoft for coffee and desert.  We hung around for an hour or two talking, sipping our drinks, and nibbling on our pies and cakes.  As we left we tossed money on the table to cover our bill and a tip.  There was probably six or seven people but the excess money for the tip was over $60.  No one cared if they got change for the $20 they tossed on the table.  That was common whenever I went out for meals with "rich people" from Microsoft--a $20 bill WAS change to them.  I further told the clueless commie that the head of my favorite charity (I didn't tell her SAF was my favorite at the time) came in to talk to a club I belonged to at Microsoft (the Microsoft Gun Club) and told us that every year the largest single donation they received was from Microsoft Corporation.  Microsoft matches employee donations dollar for dollar to qualified 501(C)(3) organizations if you do the proper paperwork.  Those "rich selfish Microsoft employees" and their greedy corporation donations made a huge difference to that charitable organization.  In my several years of being around "rich people" I didn't know a single person I would have considered selfish.  I even knew one manager who offered to pay for one of his employee's sex change operation out of his own pocket (in return he wanted the testicles in a jar to put on his desk--but that's another story I didn't tell her).  In short, I had a very limited sample of probably 50 to 100 people in one geographical location at one company, but every bit of data I had contradicted her claim.  She didn't have anything to offer and we changed subject--I wasn't so clueless that I pushed the issue with her.

Ry, over at Mindless Bit Spew, is currently working at Microsoft and today reports on the activities of just one Microsoft private pilot who got time off from work to help with Katrina relief efforts.  Here is the first paragraph of his story published in a newsgroup internal to Microsoft:

Watching the destruction of Hurricane Katrina & the effect it was having on people’s lives, I wanted to help somehow. Our neighborhood organized a lunch, and we raised $3000 in just a few hours via donations by selling sandwiches to people simply driving buy. The company that I work at building a game called Flight Simulator, Microsoft Corporation, matched the donation. Wow, I was very impressed how people rallied and came together to support individuals thousands of miles away. Although I thought this effort on my neighborhoods part was awesome, I wanted to contribute more directly to the relief effort. I searched online for a way to contribute my airplane to fly people & supplies to the disaster stricken area.

People that bash capitalism need some exposure to reality.  Personally I know of no better place than what you see at Microsoft.  They've done some things wrong but the scales are so heavily weighted on the positive side you have to be actively avoiding reality to claim socialism/communism/fascism or whatever government scheme you might imagine is a "better way".

Below is a graph of the traffic on my blog for the past week.  As I mentioned yesterday there was a spike in activity.  If I get much more I'll need something more than a 2400 baud modem to handle it*.

Who you should really fear, hasn't visited you yet.

James Gordon
December 16, 1998
Referring to Microsoft Gun Club visiting Microsoft business competitors.

We celebrated Xenia's birthday yesterday.  It was nice to have all three kids in the house for a few hours.  Here is one of the pictures I took:

Xenia has information and pictures on her Live Journal.

I haven't been following the scandal related to the University of Idaho's University Place project.  So I don't really know what to make of this Google query that showed up in the list of referral links for my blog:

grand jury witness list University of Idaho Foundation (www.google.com)

It could have been almost anyone looking for more information on the topic.  It could be a reporter.  It could be a lawyer.  It could be a "hit man" (or is that synonymous with "lawyer"?)  As near as I can tell they are located in North Carolina.

Anytime someone is looking for testifying witnesses I start hearing alarms go off in my head.  Any suggestions as to what, if anything, I should do?

I made an animated gif of the blasting of the big rock in our field the other day.  The combustion products from the gun show up in the second frame, then dirt is thrown up around the muzzle, then the detonation occurs.  This gives you an indication of the time delay between the bullet leaving the muzzle and the detonation of the explosion.  I was 127 yards from the explosion.  Just a little closer than I really should have been--there were clods of dirt that landed behind us.  My brother moved behind my van as the objects fell from the sky.  He was concerned they were rocks.

Before.

The jugs have water in them.  Except for the red targets all the explosives are under the water jugs and dirt.

After.

Here is a picture of one of the larger plastic water jug remnants:

Click on the pictures for a high resolution version.

See also my previous posts on this topic:

Rocks and explosives video
Little rocks from big rocks and explosives

Kim du Toit (his site still down at the current time) once posted that he was frequently surprised at what posts got the most attention.  Something he thought was very ordinary would get a lot of attention and something he thought was really special would end up being no big deal.  In the case of my postings nearly everything is "no big deal".  Virtually nothing makes a big splash on my blog.  However last night Keep and Bear Arms posted a link to my simple reposting of an email alert I received from them.  Traffic jumped.  Probably half of my traffic came from their referrals.  Then this morning Outdoors Unlimited linked to the same posting.  About 80% of my traffic is now from that one site.  About 10% is now from KABA.

It's not my writing, it's not my insights, it's not my leaking of privileged information (hah!  As if I would ever do that), it's that I posted an email that went out to thousands of other people.  <shrug>

It would appear that socialism really works under some circumstances. Karl Marx just had the wrong species.

Hollander & Wilson
Journey to the Ants (1994)

We heard the Feds recently insisting that those are not black helicopters, they are dark green. Sorry about that.

Jeff Cooper
From Jeff Cooper's Commentaries
Vol. 5, No. 2
February 1997

I've had a couple people ask me if I had any clues what was going on with Kim duToit's site, why it was down, etc.  I also saw a lot of people visit my site via search engines with query strings about Kim.  About all I could determine without given him a call (which I was hesitant to do because I don't really know him that well) was that a connection could be made to the machine but it was refusing requests--someone had turned the site off.

AnarchAngel has the story, the essence of which is:

I have communicated briefly with Connie Du Toit, and there is a business issue requiring Kim and Connie to take the site down right now, and without any notice. They can't provide details yet but expect some information in a few days.

The last few months have had a very sobering effect on me.  Think about this:

Q: How many gun bloggers openly use their real names? 
A: Not many.

Q: What percentage of those have had "problems" of some sort because of that?
A: A lot.

Q: How many anti-freedom bloggers do you know of that have "had problems?"
A: None that I know of.  But I don't "travel in those circles."  Anyone that you know of?

If you have to "stay in the closet" to be safe then how safe are you?  Did the Jews in Nazi Germany increase their safety by "keeping their heads down"?  It's a predator/prey type situation.  If you go into hiding then you are saying, "I am the prey."  You embolden the enemies of freedom. They become the full time predators.  They are at the top of the food-chain.  If we don't bring a few of those predators down, feed on them, and scatter their sun-bleached bones on the range among our empty brass shell casing we have nothing but fear and hiding in our future.

Careful now.  Think about this.  Who are our true predators?  They aren't just someone that advocates for their own imagined safety at our expense.  The predators are those that attempt to harm us personally (socially, financially, etc. as well as physically--which is unlikely) because they do not want our voices heard in open debate.  If you were to target someone for the loss of their job just because they advocated some new restriction on firearms then you are no better than those that targeted me or Kim for our activism.  In essence you cannot initiate "force"--you can only respond when they have initiated the use of "force" against you or another innocent party.  Don't think this means you have to "play nice".  Don't just whine about things for a while.  If they initiate "force" they have given you the signal for you to transform into a ferocious predator.  You aren't done until you are napping in the sun with a full belly and the vultures are feeding on the remnants of the carcass.

Also on this topic:

The closet
CCRKBA blasts bigotry 
Fred of Fred's M14 Stocks on being on a list
Thoughts on coming out of the closet
Coming out of the closet has it's price
Coming out of the closet

You've just dumped a scumbag.  Don't put your gun away.  You scan the area.  Jackals and lions travel in packs.  You probably will never be involved in another shooting in your entire life.  This is it!  Make the most of it.  This is a target rich environment.  See if there is someone else that needs to be shot.

Greg Hamilton
Self Defense Instructor
Nov. 19, 1995

I have had a lot of experience recently with detecting and tracking visitors to my websites that have an unusual interest in what I have to say.  Some of this is automated but a lot is still just grunt work.  I could do a lot more automation--to the point I think I could sell the service or perhaps the program.  I'm not sure on this last point.  Their may sufficient false positives that a quick look by a human eye is needed to make the final judgment.  Anyway, there are two things I would like to ask of my fellow bloggers and webmasters:

1. Would you be interested in a service that monitors your log files and was capable of giving you a notice within a few hours that someone was taking an unusual interest in you?  It might prevent you from being Dooced.
2. Do you have access to log files that I could use for test and development purposes?  I would even pay small amounts of money for log files from people who have actually been Dooced or "investigated."  "Normal" log files would also be needed but I wouldn't pay money for those.

Send me an email if you have some input.  Use nodooce@joehuffman.org

From a KABA alert I just received:

SAF INVESTIGATING NEW ORLEANS GUN SEIZURES; NEEDS TO HEAR FROM YOU

The Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) is calling on members and supporters living in the New Orleans metropolitan area who have had firearms confiscated by police, federal officers or National Guard units to contact SAF headquarters at once.

Over the past three weeks, since the New Orleans and surrounding area was devastated by Hurricane Katrina, there have been disturbing reports about warrantless searches and seizures of privately-owned firearms.

"SAF, in cooperation with the National Rifle Association, has investigators on the ground and has retained legal counsel in preparation for possible action," said SAF founder Alan M. Gottlieb.

SAF wants to speak directly with individuals who have actually had their firearms confiscated. If you, or someone you know, has had a firearm seized by authorities in the New Orleans area in the days following the hurricane, SAF needs to hear from you.

Contact SAF via e-mail at safalert@liberty.seanet.com. Please provide us with your full name, address, current working telephone number and the date and time of the firearm(s) seizure. Please also let us know the best time of day for us to reach you at that number.

Sincerely yours, Alan M. Gottlieb President, KeepAndBearArms.com

Earlier this week Xenia and I entered a bunch of photos in the Latah County Fair.  She entered most of these.  I entered this one:

All got blue ribbons except for three of Xenia's.  The Blue Fairy on the next to the last row got a white ribbon, the one of the cat and the flower got a red ribbon, and one was entered in a different contest which hasn't been decided yet.  She is very talented.  Barb and I went to the open house at the High School last night and got to meet all her teachers.  She is taking "Yearbook" this year and is one of the photographers.  The teacher held up last year's "Inner Visions" (once a year school publication for outstanding literary works) with this picture of Xenia's on the cover.  We are very proud.

I enjoyed hanging around my picture at the fair last night and listening to the comments of the people when they noticed it.  I think I'll do that some more today...

I had a phone interview this morning with a software company.  It seemed to go very well.  My skills in the area they need help with are a bit rusty but I know I could do the job.  They said they are having trouble finding qualified people so my guess is that I'm in the running for at least a little while.  I probably won't hear back from them for at least a week and then from there even if things went perfectly it would be at least several more weeks before I could actually start work. 

Xenia, Xenia's John, and James were really excited about the job possibility and not just that it's a job but because what I would be doing in this job (details after it is decided one way or the other).  Barb is less enthusiastic because it is out of state.  I share Barb's concern on that issue but it is the number one company I would like to develop software for.  That makes up for a lot.

Those who say that life is worth living at any cost have already written for themselves an epitaph of infamy, for there is no cause and no person that they will not betray to stay alive.

Sidney Hook
American Philosopher

Kevin, over at The Smallest Minority, received a letter from one of his readers today.  I read it a little while ago.  A contributing factor is that I'm really tired right now but I started crying when I got to this part:

My dad, however, was a survivor of Auschwitz. My grandparents were murdered there. And it is now a cliche, but it's true, the 'average' Jew could not defend themselves. So that got me to thinkin...and then seeing how it starts to look like America could end up like many S. American countries, with gated communities and barbed wire or broken glass up on the walls of the compounds...and I used to think this was the siren song of the Cassandras, but New Orleans showed that ain't necessarily true...well, all this speaks of the need to have some protection.

This is the part that has to make Kevin really puff up in justifiable pride:

You've helped me understand a great deal of things I otherwise might not have. I had a lifetime bias against guns...still won't say I like 'em, but that's that cultural bias I mentioned, and having one for self-defense is not the same as enjoying killing.

Although it scares some people he should now understand my post Why Boomershoot?  And although many people think I'm paranoid for my Jews in the Attic Test I doubt he is one of them.

He's looking for someone in the St. Louis area to take him shooting for the first time.  I would go and supply an assortment of firearms and the ammunition if someone wants to cover my travel expenses.  I'm a certified NRA instructor, I'm a high class B IPSC shooter, I do pretty good with a long range rifle, and further credentials are here.

Thanks for sharing Kevin.  That was really great.

Update: I have a pledge to cover the air travel with excess frequent flyer miles.  If I could get a little bit more to cover a couple nights in a cheap motel I'll cover my meals.

Update2: I now have pledges to cover all my expenses.  Now it just depends on if Kevin's reader wants to accept or not.

Via a pointer from Mindless Bit Spew. The Dutch are planning to open a "cradle to grave" electronic file on every child.

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands - The Dutch government plans to open an electronic file on every child at birth as a tool to spot and protect the troubled kids of the future.

Beginning Jan. 1, 2007, all citizens will be tracked from cradle to grave in a single database — including health, education, family and police records — the health ministry said Tuesday.

As a privacy safeguard, no single person or agency will be able to access all contents of a file. But organizations can raise "red flags" in the dossier to caution other agencies about problems, ministry spokesman Jan Brouwer said.

The intention is to protect troubled children, Brouwer said. Until now, schools and police have been unable to communicate with each other about truancy records and criminality, which are often linked.

"Child protection services will say, 'Hey, there's a warning flag from the police. There's another one from school. There's another one from the doctor," Brouwer said. "Something must be going on and it's time to call the parents in for a meeting."

Every child will get a Citizens Service Number, making it easier to keep track of children with problems even when their families move, said Secretary of Health Clemence Ross.

"Safety, guidance, education and supervision are incredibly important for the development of children," Ross said.

All Dutch births are currently registered with local authorities.

Doesn't it always seem to be "for the children"?  It has often been said the road to hell is paved with good intentions.  I claim it is paved with the skulls of the tens of millions of people, including children, who died at the hands of their own governments intent on doing good at any cost.

It must be the Dutch forgot about the little incident back in the late '30s and '40s when those type of records were found to be quite useful--when tracking down all the people with "Jewish blood".  And how is that "privacy safeguard" enforced?  Is there anything that can't be changed by a simple act of the lawmakers?  As I said in the context of a U.S. Universal Biometric Identification the safeguards that I would require to be put in place in order to believe the contents of the database would not abused would cause the most enthusiastic Auschwitz guard to cringe at my creativity in punishment methods, violate numerous protections of the Bill of Rights, and probably inspire several additions to it.  And, I now add, enforceable by any person anywhere on the planet that has a reasonable suspicion there was abuse of that database.

The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence that it is not utterly absurd; indeed in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widespread belief is more often likely to be foolish than sensible.

Bertrand Russell

My video digitizer is not working right. The audio is messed up.  But here is the video anyway.  At least you can see the big clouds of dirt.  There was one attempt that failed to detonate when we didn't have a "detonator target" on top of the main charge and I tried to shoot into the top portion of the milk jugs.  Also, I think there was one blast on the first rock we didn't video tape.

RockBlasting20050913.wmv (1.59 MB)

See also Little rocks from big rocks and explosives.

I've seen this done before but never quite as well done as this site: Myths About Gun Control.  But of course I'm a geek and like lots of notes and references.

More than two thousand years ago Aristotle opined that most of the human race has essentially the soul of a slave. A recent Associated Press poll recorded that fifty-four percent of those questioned seemed willing to trade liberty for security. The sad fact is that one cannot trade the one for the other. You can surrender your liberty, but what you get in turn is never a significant increase in your security. There are those in Israel who feel that they would like to trade "land for peace." That will not work either.

Jeff Cooper
From Jeff Cooper's Commentaries
Vol. 3, No. 7
16 May 1995

The complete collection of pictures for this adventure is here.  Below is just a sample.

I got up about 6:00 this morning, took Xenia to her drivers ed class by 7:00 and was on my way to the farm.  A little after 10:00 I had all my gear gathered up from the Taj Mahal and met my brothers at the house.  We went to a field they had been removing rocks from for several days.  There were two rocks that couldn't be dug out with the equipment they had.  Below is rock number one from the "back side":

Rock number one from the "front side":

The rock appeared to be directly connected to the earth's crust.  It also poked just above the surface of the dirt (prior to their digging with the back hoe and cat).  We put one of my improvised shaped charges on top of it and got back 93 yards to shoot it.  Here is a picture of the charge all ready for detonation by rifle fire:

The results were disappointing.  It removed a small "cap" off the right side and showed just a hint of a crack basically down the middle.  But not enough to brag about much.  We hit it again in the same spot with the same type of charge.  The crack got a little wider.  We tried a different approach.  A "water hammer":

The detonating target for my rifle is on top.  In the middle is about two pounds of HE in a thin rectangle.  On the bottom is about two pounds of water in a thin rectangle.  The thought was that the HE would accelerate the water into the crack and force it open further.  The results were, again, disappointing:

We came back after lunch with more explosives and tried two milk jugs (about 10 pounds of HE) with rocks and water around the sides to help confine the charge.  This yielded a significant break in the top side of the rock which we easily exploited with a large bar:

We put about five pounds of HE under this rock and another five pounds on top of that but still in the crack.  Around that we packed dirt and water jugs:

This pulverized it:

We went on to Rock two.  Having learned our lesson we packed about 20 pounds of HE in the side of it next to the bedrock and put dirt and water jugs all around it.  It took four of the 4" square detonator targets stacked on top of each other to reach a height we could see it from our shooting position:

I've never set off a 20 pound boomer before.  In fact the 10 pound boomers a little earlier were a new record for me.  We got back what seemed to be a reasonable distance which according to the laser range finder was 127 yards.  I fired and clods of dirt (sure glad we didn't put rocks around it!) landed behind us and off to the side of us.  It had the desired effect on the rock however:

Video was taken as well.  I'll get that digitized and up before long.

Gun bans don't ban guns; rather, they only ban citizens from legally defending themselves with guns.

James Bovard
Lost Rights
ISBN 0-312-12333-7
Copyright 1994, 1995

From the Sunday Times (London):

SCIENTISTS have created a “miracle mouse” that can regenerate amputated limbs or badly damaged organs, making it able to recover from injuries that would kill or permanently disable normal animals

...

The researchers have also found that when cells from the test mouse are injected into ordinary mice, they too acquire the ability to regenerate.

The discoveries raise the prospect that humans could one day be given the ability to regenerate lost or damaged organs, opening up a new era in medicine.

Details of the research will be presented next week at a scientific conference on ageing, Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence, at Cambridge University. Ellen Heber-Katz, professor of immunology at the Wistar Institute, an American biomedical research centre, says that the ability of mice at her laboratory to regenerate appears to be controlled by about a dozen genes.

She is still researching their exact functions, but it seems almost certain that humans have comparable genes.

...

The researchers suspect that the same genes could confer greater longevity and are measuring the animals’ survival rate. The mice are, however, only 18 months old and the normal lifespan is two years so it is too early to reach conclusions.

The implications are mind-boggling.

Other articles on the same topic from:

• China Daily
• Times of India
• Better Humans (Canada)
• Australian

I just pushed the "Send" button on another FOIA request to Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.  This one will probably cause some people to mess their pants and perhaps lose their jobs.  And that's even if I don't lift a finger from now on.  The unfortunate part is that the people most directly in the path of this particular "instrument" are the one's least responsible.  It could cost PNNL a lot of money to deal with the implications of this.  And that doesn't count the embarrassment, loss of confidence, and potential loss of business they will suffer with their customers.  Their best course of action at this point is to give up protecting the people that committed the felonies in the process of terminating my employment at PNNL.  Things will be much more pleasant for everyone, except the felons, if they "see the light".

I checked on the status of two of the other "blunt instruments" (there are five total now) that are working their way toward them.  I don't have anything to report yet although I expected I something before now.  This latest one I will be able to report on in no more than two weeks.

Israeli turned over the land they captured in '67.  The dust hadn't even settled from their exit when:

Palestinians surged triumphantly into demolished Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip early today, torching empty synagogues and firing shots into the air, as the last Israeli soldiers withdrew after 38 years of occupation.

I can see some really hostility expressed by making the synagogues into barns, or a manure storage storage facility but even that would be considerably over the top in my "book"--and I'm an atheist.  Burning them to the ground is stupid, completely irrational, or an expression of blinding hatred.  As Clayton Cramer said in his post:

Can you imagine the upset if Israelis had torched mosques in the Occupied Terroritories? There is something unnerving about this--rather like Krystallnacht translated into Arabic.

I'm guessing it's blind hatred.

In another article -- regarding the spread of AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases:

Al-Sayyid: Most certainly. The entire world, from the US to the most distant country, acknowledges that if they had stoned the fornicators, and prevented abomination, things would have been much better.

No wonder they call it "The Religion of Peace."  Anyone that disagrees with their view of morality is killed and things are peaceful again.

They give us no acceptable options but to destroy their extremist culture.

Analog Kid has the details of the next match on his website.  It has a rather appropriate theme--he calls it Looter Shooter.

The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to allow the subject races to possess arms. History shows that all conquerors who have allowed their subject races to carry arms have prepared their own downfall by doing so.

Adolph Hitler

My comment on a posting over at Diary of a (Fired) Flight Attendant was approved and the Queen herself looked at the PNNL info website (I could tell from the details in my log file that it was her).  The links I left in the comment should get some more traffic.  Plus the email I sent to a reporter might generator some more interest in the case.

You have to register to read them but excerpts follow the links.

Philadelphia Daily News: Your blog could get you recruited - or fired

For businesses, blogs and other forms of personal Internet communication constitute a new frontier fraught with promise and peril. On the one hand, companies are scrambling to use them as a recruiting and marketing tool, and are encouraging some employees to blog. On the other, they are wondering how to deal with the damage that current and former employees and dissatisfied customers can do on the Web.

The result is a "mild level of social panic," Rainie said.

"The lawyers and the marketers are, in many cases, at least in covert war with each other."

Miami Herald: Delta employee fired for blogging sues airline

A former Delta Air Lines flight attendant who says she was fired weeks after she posted photos of herself in uniform on her Internet blog has filed a sexual discrimination lawsuit against the airline.

Ellen Simonetti, whose job was based in Atlanta but lives in Austin, Texas, filed the lawsuit on Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Atlanta, saying that male colleagues with potentially insensitive material on their blogs have gone unpunished.

The case could plow fresh legal ground on whether a company can take action against an employee for operating a blog. Simonetti was featured in a recent People magazine article that mentioned workers who were fired for blog content.

I really don't have much interest in suing PNNL.  It wasn't PNNL, per say, that did me wrong.  It was the individuals that used false information, such as claims I used government computers to host personal websites, that are to blame.  In fact, I've had two lawyers tell me there were probably felonies committed.  The problem is that it's difficult to get a prosecutor to take the case and a private attorney typically can't prosecute for a crime, just take civil action.  I still have lots of things to try and just thought of a new one yesterday.  It's a rather nasty thing to do and it will hurt the wrong people, as well as Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and their customers, but if they don't turn over the files on the investigation under the Privacy Act Information Request (their denial is being appealed) I'll use it.

As I've posted before I think most of the money the government spends on "security" is a stupid waste and it is a threat to our freedom (for example see Universal ID Card Fatal Flaws and Stop Intrusive Airport Screenings).  Schneier, my security expert hero, got another editorial published where he talks about the waste portion of things:

Funding security based on movie plots looks good on television, and gets people reelected. But there are millions of possible scenarios, and we're going to guess wrong. The billions spent defending airlines are wasted if the terrorists bomb crowded shopping malls instead.

And he tells us where the money should be spent:

Our nation needs to spend its homeland security dollars on two things: intelligence-gathering and emergency response. These two things will help us regardless of what the terrorists are plotting, and the second helps both against terrorist attacks and national disasters.

...

Money spent on emergency response makes us safer, regardless of what the next disaster is, whether terrorist-made or natural.

This includes good communications on the ground, good coordination up the command chain, and resources -- people and supplies -- that can be quickly deployed wherever they're needed.

Similarly, money spent on intelligence-gathering makes us safer, regardless of what the next disaster is. Against terrorism, that includes the NSA and the CIA. Against natural disasters, that includes the National Weather Service and the National Earthquake Information Center.

The problem is politicians are very short-sighted.  Far-sighted politicians have a near zero chance of getting elected.  Can you imagine someone running for Governor of Louisiana on a platform of shutting down New Orleans and letting the Mississippi reroute itself 100+ miles to the west?  It's probably the right thing to do and would have saved thousands of lives.  If our Federal government had been limited to it's proper duties as defined in the Constitution economics would have forced them to "do the right" thing anyway.  But the Feds ended up spending billions on the levees and flood control to fight a battle that we will cannot win.  The question is how many times will the people of New Orleans lose this battle before the U.S. taxpayers say, "It's time to face reality.  Pack your things and leave."

See also:

New Orleans may have to face reality 
Another shot at New Orleans
Now do you believe me?
New Orleans was most vulnerable major city to hurricanes
More levee info

From the New York Times article New Orleans Begins Confiscating Firearms as Water Recedes.  The caption is theirs not mine.

Police officers looking for survivors today in the Ninth Ward of New Orleans.

One has to wonder what they are going to do with the survivors when they find them.  See also this post of mine.

An unjust law is itself a species of violence. Arrest for its breach is more so.

Mohandas K. Gandhi
(1869-1948), Indian political and spiritual leader.
Non-Violence in Peace and War, vol. 2, ch. 150 (1949).

Lyle (at UltiMAK) and many others have been wanting me to shoot clay pigeons with them for a long time.  I can only think of one time, probably 12 years ago, when I have even seen people do it live rather than in some video.  Lots of friends shoot sporting clays and trap, but I've never been to the range with them despite lots of invitations.  It just wasn't that interesting to me.  I'm not interested in shooting birds for food.  And my shooting activities are not intended to be entirely recreational.  But Lyle got me out to the range yesterday.  I brought my SAIGA-12, ammo, and some clay pigeons Ry gave me along with another pile that Lyle had.  It sometimes took three shots but I got the first ten or so.  As I got tired it got more difficult and I started missing.  And when I tried doubles I couldn't even hit one of them.  But I went through probably 100 rounds and 50 targets.  It was fun.

Now tell me what the practical aspect of it is for me.

The necessary consequence of man's right to life is his right to self-defense.  In a civilized society, force may be used only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use.  All the reasons which make the initiation of force an evil, make the retaliatory use of force a moral imperative.

Ayn Rand
1962, from The Virtue of Selfishness

Background:

• Publicola
• Kim du Toit
• Ten Ring
• Says Uncle
• The Smallest Minority

In the mid and late 90's the anti-freedom activists were winning.  They were nearly dancing in the street.  Never mind they were dancing in the blood from each new school or mass public shooting.  Just when we would think they had been stopped another "event" would happen and they would get the extra little boost they needed to get that last vote to infringe on our freedom just a little bit (and sometimes a LOT) more.  At the range or in hushed voices late at night in someone's den people would talk, "When you hear they took Frank's guns you'll know Frank is dead."  "When they start going door-to-door that's when they will realize they bit off more than they could chew."  "They can have my guns--when they are empty."

Even a brief look at history tells you that isn't how it happens.  Look at Germany, Australia, England, and even Canada.  There is always an "event" that gives the anti-freedom people "justification" for infringing on inalienable rights.  They don't just wake up some ordinary, bright sunny day and say, "This is the day we start shipping the Jews off to the camps."  Or "This is the day we pass the law that makes firearms possession by private citizens illegal."  By taking advantage of essentially random tragedies they can ratchet down on our freedoms at times when all but the most devoted freedom lovers have some doubt, some question about the wisdom of private people having freedom.  The majority, if for only a week or two, can be persuaded that maybe it really would be better to let government take care of them.  That it might be better for the the individual to give up an essential liberty for an imagined temporary safety.  Of course Ben Franklin has the proper response to that argument. But this pact with the devil is just too tempting for the majority when they are writhing in pain from the latest event.  And the pain from the event we know as Katrina and the aftermath in New Orleans make it seem acceptable to the majority--"Yes, they are taking everyone's guns, but they had to for everyone's safety."

When it comes right down to it you will be far more alone than you think you will be when you are talking about it at the range with your shooting buddies.  Your fair weather friends will have "really important things" they have to do when the troops come down your street knocking on the doors and entering the houses one-by-one with the M-16's at the ready (read about it and watch the video).  People, as much as they might say, "I don't care what other people think" do care what other people think--at least some.  And when other people publicly approve of the confiscation and the majority have doubts about resisting it will be difficult to rally the numbers needed to make any conflict go decisively in your favor.  And how much have you practiced as a team?  Probably zero.  Nearly all shooting events are individual events or at best you have shooter/spotter relationship where there is just one gun between the two of you.  You'll be going up against teams of shooters that have been practicing for at least months if not years as a team.  If you do that you better know exactly what your capabilities are and what you expect to accomplish.  Punching holes in a piece of stationary paper 30 feet away is a useful exercise but it doesn't compare to shooting at a trained team of shooters.  Think things through. What is going to happen in the seconds after you fire your first shot?  If you make it that far.  You might get hit from 200 yards away by the sniper in the shadows from the second story window down the street as you bring your shotgun to your shoulder.  Have you even walked down your street thinking about the positions and angles for shooters to cover their teammates as they go door-to-door?  It's going to be second nature for them to see what to you will take hours to figure out--if you are lucky.

If you think you are going to stand up to "them" going door-to-door then you need to know if you will have anyone helping.  If you haven't practiced with them already then the answer is, almost for certain, "No."  If you are going it alone then be darned sure you know the price you pay is worth what you are getting in return.  How many can you take out before your gun is forever silenced?

This is Why Boomershoot.

I finally got the performance reviews all scanned in and the "business sensitive" information blacked out.  You can see an overview on this page with links to the actual images.  When the images come up in your browser you may need to resize the image to be full size so the text is readable.  Here are some quotes from my most recent review, completed in January of 2005:

• "Joe is a very good engineer and innovator.  He has the ability to see through apparent complexity and find elegant solutions to difficult problems."
• "Joe is also a good leader.  He as technical credibility as well as a diplomatic disposition that allows him to direct teams to do very good work while avoiding conflicts."
• "Joe has a great future at the lab due in part to his expertise and interpersonal relationship style."
• "Joe did an excellence job on the [deleted project name] project.  The client was very happy with the end result."
• "Joe brings a (sic) unique perspective and set of experiences which allow him to make contributions to the success of a project.  Joe shows an excellent ability to plan tasks, manage scope, and lead a project team to the end goal of a project."
• "Over the last year Joe has assisted with various IED problems and has brought a number of solutions forward for discussion and evaluation, as his explosives background and personal research gives him a good feel for the issues involved."

I received "Meets Expectations" on all but one item.  That item was was "Acts with Integrity and Trust" where I received a rating of "Exceeds Expectations".

I'm all in favor of gay's being allowed to marry.  I think marriage is a great institution and people that are willing to make that sort of commitment should not be prohibited from getting hitched to the partner of their choice.  California legislators have passed a bill removing restrictions on same sex marriages.  Governor Schwarzenegger says he is going to veto it.  From the LA Times via Yahoo News:

... announced through an aide Wednesday that he would veto the measure "out of respect for the will of the people."

In a careful statement, Schwarzenegger press secretary Margita Thompson invoked the voter approval in March 2000 of Proposition 22, which said: "Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California."

I have mixed feelings on Arnie's action.  I have a pretty strong tendency to agree with his reasoning, especially since Proposition 22 passed with 61% of the vote.  But what if Proposition 22 had said blacks/Jews/whatever were not allowed to marry outside their groups?  Or 61% voted to re-institute slavery?  Is the only valid solution to go through the courts seeking to remedy the injustice or convince the population at large it's a bad decision?  It's a tough call for me.  I think the bottom line is that denying someone marriage isn't clearly (although I think a case can be made for it) infringing a fundamental right like the right to freedom (non-slavery), freedom of speech, and the right to keep and arms.  Therefore I have to conclude Arnie made the right decision--especially when it provokes the moon-bats into statements like this:

 "The only reason that he could be doing this is that he is pandering to the far right," said Assemblyman Mark Leno (D-San Francisco), the measure's author.

61% of the voters were against same-sex marriage, therefore Assemblyman Leno must think 61% of California voters are "far right".  Someone should give him his anti-psychotic meds as they lead him away to the funny farm.

More delays and people ignoring this waste of time and money--but this time there's talk of the police ignoring it:

In what has become a familiar refrain, the Canada Firearms Centre has once again quietly put off several gun regulations that were supposed to take effect this month.

Among the measures delayed until next year is a provision to have police forces across Canada register all their weapons - including seized guns - with the federal agency. New rules governing gun shows have been deferred until November 2006, while regulations that would force gun-makers to identify all firearms with internationally recognized markings won't come into force until the end of 2007.

The provisions were initially supposed to take effect last January, but were put off to Sept. 1. Now they've been deferred again.

A spokesman for Public Safety Minister Anne McLellan said the deferral is both to "ensure compliance and be responsive to the feedback" on the regulations from the public.

...

The latest delays indicate there are still many kinks in the system, said Conservative MP Peter MacKay.

"It's another example of the ineffective, overly bureaucratic nightmare that is the gun registry," MacKay said from Halifax.

"The government continues with this simultaneous face-saving, rear-end-covering exercise of trying to justify a very cumbersome, useless system."

MacKay, a former Crown prosecutor, insisted the government backed off because police forces would have ignored the registration demand.

"They've got far more important things to do."

The registry has become an easy target. The Liberals promised it would cost taxpayers just $2 million when they introduced it in 1995. But the price has skyrocketed past $1 billion and been the subject of scathing criticism from the federal auditor general.

Opponents claim tens of thousands of guns remain unregistered, and say the system punishes law-abiding farmers and sport hunters while doing nothing to deter illegal weapons from getting into the hands of criminals.

It's a losing issue.  They should salvage the computers, lay off all the Canada Firearms Centre workers, and either spend the money saved on police and/or prisons or let the people use it to buy a good handgun and training to defend themselves and their families with.  Registration of firearms and their owners is no more effective in reducing crime and no less abhorrent than registering Jews/blacks/homosexuals/etc.

Mr. Completely has the results posted.  I discussed my entries here.  In the over 4" barrel class I came in 4th and 6th with the .22LR and .40S&W.  Overall I was 5th and 7th.  If there had been a center fire category I would have been number 1 in both overall and in the over 4" barrel class.  I had a score of 407/500 even after loosing a possible 10 points because I fired only four instead of five rounds on one target (or I suppose it is possible I had a "perfect double"--but not likely).  The next closest score with a center-fire handgun was a 383/500.

No, not that Taj Mahal.  Ry designed and supervised the construction of the explosives magazine we use for the Boomershoot.  We debated on different sizes and options and finally decided to go for the "Taj Mahal" option. 

Yesterday I made some modifications to keep the ATF happy.  Originally the locks and hasps were approved and I used them for years without complaint.  Then after the last inspection I got an email from Crystal asked me to make some modifications or get a paperwork exemption.  I elected to do the modification.  Here are pictures of the "hoods" I put over the locks and hasp to protect it from direct access by a saw or pry bar:

Click on the pictures for high resolution versions.

As usual Bruce Schneier articulates the straight scoop on security issues well.  In this article he also takes a swipe at the politicians with the "make people feel good" mindset.  From Wired News:

Sometimes it seems like the people in charge of homeland security spend too much time watching action movies. They defend against specific movie plots instead of against the broad threats of terrorism.

...

The problem with movie plot security is that it only works if we guess right. If we spend billions defending our subways, and the terrorists bomb a bus, we've wasted our money. To be sure, defending the subways makes commuting safer. But focusing on subways also has the effect of shifting attacks toward less-defended targets, and the result is that we're no safer overall.

Terrorists don't care if they blow up subways, buses, stadiums, theaters, restaurants, nightclubs, schools, churches, crowded markets or busy intersections. Reasonable arguments can be made that some targets are more attractive than others: airplanes because a small bomb can result in the death of everyone aboard, monuments because of their national significance, national events because of television coverage, and transportation because most people commute daily. But the United States is a big country; we can't defend everything.

One problem is that our nation's leaders are giving us what we want. Party affiliation notwithstanding, appearing tough on terrorism is important. Voting for missile defense makes for better campaigning than increasing intelligence funding. Elected officials want to do something visible, even if it turns out to be ineffective.

You will see I simply believe in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. And in today's world of expanding, pervasive and all-powerful government, that makes me an extremist.

Steven A. Sliver
The Liberty Pole
May 1998 Volume V. No. 2
The Lawyer's Second Amendment Society

The creeping political repeal of the right to self-defense is a huge decrease in the modern American's liberty because the government has completely failed to fill the void.  The government has stripped millions of people of their right to own weapons--yet generally left them free to be robbed, raped, and murdered.  Gun bans are one of the best cases of laws that corner private citizens--forcing them either to put themselves into danger or to be a lawbreaker.

James Bovard
Lost Rights
ISBN 0-312-12333-7
Copyright 1994, 1995

Xenia's John (I love calling her boyfriend, John, that.  The triple meaning and all.) and I went to the range this afternoon and I shot Mr. Completely's Postal Match #2 with two different calibers.  .22LR and .40 S&W.  Both were in the Long Barrel class.  Click on each of the pictures for a full resolution view.

 
                           203/250                                                                  212/250

Total score for the .22LR 415/500.

 
                                 205/250                                                            202/250

Total score for the .40S&W 407/500.  It should have been at least another five points higher but I only put four holes in the center target of the offhand target instead of five.  I didn't notice it until I got home and it was way past dark.

Not great, but I'm not unhappy with my results either.

Denise over at the ten ring posted about buying a new rifle suitable for Boomershoot.  My plan is working.

From the University of Idaho website:

University of Idaho Launches Humanitarian Efforts To Assist Victims of Hurricane 'Katrina'

Sept. 1, 2005

MOSCOW, Idaho -- University of Idaho President Timothy White announced that the university is immediately accepting students who enrolled or planned to enroll at universities in the areas affected by hurricane "Katrina." Students will be placed in fall classes with available space, with first priority given to Idaho residents. They also may enroll for the January, 2006 semester.

Ten scholarships for tuition, fee and housing for one year will be offered to any student whose college career has been interrupted by Katrina. Interested students may contact UI Admissions Office immediately, (208) 885-6326.

The University of Idaho also will collect humanitarian aid via cash, checks, credit cards and UI payroll deductions, said White. Contributions will be transferred directly to the American Red Cross. Such fund-raising efforts will be conducted at all campus sporting and cultural events throughout the year.

"As images and stories surface of the catastrophic effects of Hurricane Katrina, we are just beginning to discover the devastation on communities, families and individuals in the southeastern U.S.," said White.

"It is clear that our fellow Americans who have been affected will need the nation's help. The University of Idaho is stepping forward to help and to motivate others to join us in this humanitarian effort."

UI student groups have begun to discuss how best to get help to the hurricane victims, said Steve Janowiak, director of student activities and leadership. "Lots of our student service organizations and the associated student organization are talking about how they can help."

Contacts: Nancy Hilliard, University of Idaho Communications, (208) 885-6567, hilliard@uidaho.edu

They are not on the side of the patriots. They are on the side of the criminals.

Andrew M. Cuomo
Housing Secretary
July 27, 2000
Regarding gun manufactures advertisements claiming they were supporting American values by manufacturing and selling firearms.
From: http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/072800nra-guns.html
[A reminder of how far we have come in the past five years. -- Joe]

The results of the rifle postal match have been reported now.  I received this certificate:

Click on the picture for the full sized version.  Also note that Analog Kid at softgreenglow.com also got a perfect score but apparently didn't put himself in the running because he is running the match.

The results from my last pistol match are posted on the Lewiston Pistol Club site.  I did rather mediocre when shooting against the clock but when we did the man-on-man portion of the event I did much better.  It's all about adrenaline management.

As to conforming outwardly, and living your own life inwardly, I have not a very high opinion of that course.

Henry David Thoreau
(1817-1862), U.S. philosopher, author, naturalist.
Journals (1906), entry in 1850.

From The Independent:

Up to 4m guns in UK and police are losing the battle

'IoS' investigation: Another week, another horrific shooting. The culture of illegal firearms is running out of control

By Sophie Goodchild and Paul Lashmar

Published: 04 September 2005

British criminals could have access to as many as four million illegal firearms, criminal intelligence experts warn.

...

Even when handguns were banned, only around 3,000 of the 100,000 believed to have been in private hands before May 2004 have been handed in for destruction. The other 97,000 have disappeared.

David Raynes a former senior Customs investigator, believes there is now an ample underground supply of guns. "Guns can be had for £100 or so," he said. "I suspect the market is saturated in both Britain and Ireland. The real UK arms smuggling issue now is probably military explosives and detonators, to be used in future acts of terrorism."

And is anyone surprised?  Did anyone think the ban would be any more effective than the ban on recreational drugs?  The only thing they accomplished with the ban was drive the number of valid defensive use of firearm in protection of innocent life to almost zero.  And what do they think the proper solution to this is?  Why it's as if it came out of the book "When Prophecy Fails":

After many years of campaigning by the gun control lobby, a ban finally came into force in May 2004, making it illegal to own a blank-firing replica gun without a firearms licence.

I shake my head in amazement at why the politicians over there are still allowed to breath.

Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities.  The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence and fulfills the duty to express the results of his thoughts in clear form.

Albert Einstein

Once again Barb and I are leaving the Huffman-Scott "compound and arsenal" in the hands of one of our adult children with a couple of dogs taking the point position.  Xenia is going with us this time so if I don't find an Internet connection there won't be a "Quote of the day" or anything else on my blog tomorrow.  I'll be back on Monday.

I was gone all day yesterday working on the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory project.  Other than spending an obscene amount of money on gas I thought it went quite well.  I won't know the results for at least a week but on the drive back home (I do a lot of thinking when driving alone) I realized what must have happened to cause them to "reconsider."  I called Barb with the news as soon as I had a good cell-phone signal.

I only was able to check out two of the four "blunt instruments" to see if they were responsible.  Both of those turned up negative.  After several hours of mulling it over I came up with a hypothesis that explained all the data I had.  It almost for certain was one particular "blunt instrument" that I implemented almost as an afterthought.  It arrived at it's destination Wednesday, Aug 31, 2005 13:57 GMT.  Less than 36 hours later I received word they had "reconsidered".  After I thought about it I realized what I had done, had it been consciously thought out, was rather brilliant.  Everyone's "hand" would have been forced by my action.  PNNL had made a mistake by putting an unnecessary sentence in an email I was able to get my hands on.  It was enough to get some "traction" and it appears to have blown the lid off of things.  I won't know for certain until I get my hands on the information they are sending me but from what I heard on the phone it sounded far better than what I imagined I would get for that particular effort.  What I think happened was they knew I was now going to get nearly everything I wanted, just from a different source.  I had not even considered my action would get me the information I wanted.  I thought that at best it would just cause them some pain.  So rather than look bad in court, by not giving it to me directly, they tried to wipe some of the crap off of their face and "reconsider".

This is sort of a security game.  It's better to be on the offense because you only have to find one crack to blow it open.  The defender has to have everything nailed down tight.  I have been probing from many different angles and almost by accident found where they made a mistake.  I probably shouldn't say, "almost".  It was essentially a whim I requested the file that had the email with the one hugely significant sentence in it.  Then it took me a couple of days to realize I could take a swing at that sentence.  And when I took the swing I didn't realize it would be such a solid hit--that took hours of bewilderment at their reaction before I put it together.  In hindsight it was stupid that it took me so long to realize the significance. 

The game isn't over but I just connected my bat on a significant portion of their ball.  My Labor Day weekend should be a lot happier than some of theirs.  I'll be fantasizing about some anti-gun owner bigots in a Federal prison spending "quality time with Bubba" and they will be thinking about the same thing.

Update: I just received the file.  Either I misunderstood or the guy I talked to on the telephone didn't understand what had been redacted.  I understood that the names of other people who were being investigated at the same time as me were redacted.  The names redacted were other people being hired at the same time as me.  All I received was what should have been in the "personnel file" I received several weeks ago.  There was only the tinist hint of the investigation in the file.  It is useless but I'll post it later today anyway.  I'll get the performance reviews and goals scanned and posted sometime today.  The battle continues.

As for the "I don't shoot that kind of game because I don't want to learn bad tactics" crowd, I think that is an over used excuse by people that can't win. Shooting IPSC or IDPA won't make you a bad tactician. Being a bad tactician will make you one! Most of the people that complain about tactics wouldn't know a tactic if it hit them in the ass.

Tactics are making the most out of the situation with the resources at hand. Every time you "game" a stage you are engaging in tactical thinking. They just might not be the right tactics for a gunfight.

Greg Hamilton
11/11/2001
Insights Training Email List

I found some more articles on David Pruss, the guy my brother and his dog helped find and arrest.  My brother gave me the link to the first one (if you read only one article this is the one to read) and said this about it, "It includes a picture of his shelter after the fir boughs and tarps were removed. Inside, you will see a small tent."

• Clearwater Tribune (new information with pictures)
• Seattle PI (essentially the same as the Lewiston Morning Tribune article I posted a couple days ago)
• Billings Gazette (essentially the same as the Lewiston Morning Tribune article I posted a couple days ago)
• Casper Star Tribune (old information--from August 4th)

See also my previous posts:

• Details from one of the dog teams
• They caught him
• We already got the hole dug

My brother was one of the people that helped catch the guy shooting up the logging equipment.  Here is his story:

From: Doug Huffman
Sent: Thursday, September 01, 2005 10:31 PM
To: Joe Huffman
Subject: Re: Were you and Nick one of the teams?

Hi Joe,

Yes,  Nick and I were there when he was arrested.  Also, it was tear gas
(CS) not pepper spray.  If you look at his picture, you will see his
left arm is in a sling.  He was on his hands and knees coming out of his
shelter, his right hand lifted off the floor and revealed his MAK-90 on
the floor, he moved his hand out, leaving the rifle on the ground.  Then
for some unexplained reason, he started to back up, his right hand moved
back towards the rifle.  Guy Cordle very nearly shot him in the back
with a 12 ga at that point, in a split second decision, he decided he
could stop the subject with a hard kick to the left arm right where it
connects to the shoulder.  That knocked him flat on his face and removed
his hand from the proximity of the rifle.  They took him to the ER and
they apparently put his arm in a sling.

I went with two deputies on Monday afternoon after he stole the coffee
with my GPS and compass.  We stopped at various points around the canyon
where he was and took GPS points and compass reading from the
directional antenna on a fish and game locator.  When you get too close,
the receiver would receive signal from any direction, so we had to be
back a ways and didn't take the receiver into the woods with us the next
morning.  I went home and plotted it out on graph paper, determined the
most likely point and programmed it into my GPS and set it to take us to
that location.  We went in the next morning at day break, Nick and I in
the middle with 5 others.  Nick was there to alert us if he was hiding
in the bushes, or behind a log.  Moving very slowly, we moved about 1/2
mile in 2 hours before he was located.  My GPS point was about 200 yards
off.  Nick was some help, but wasn't the one who made the find.  He kept
wanting to go east and the closer we got, the more intent and excited he
got.  We were probably 50 yards away from his shelter when we spotted a
platic bag hanging from a tree up on the  hillside to our right, that
was beside his shelter.  I am writing up a complete story, but it will
probably be weeks before I finish it.  The other dog team was the blood
hound we got from South Carolina.  Bruce Hanson and the bloodhound were
on the North side of the canyon, watching in case the subject made a run
for it that way.  There were  "snipers" on all sides of the canyon with
high powered scoped rifles.  They didn't have the authority to shoot on
sight, but would try to challenge and stop the subject if we drove him
out of the canyon.

... [unrelated material deleted] ...

Doug

The Miami Herald has the story:

Floods unavoidable, Army engineers say

The Army Corp of Engineers said recent studies on strengthening New Orleans' levee system, designed decades ago, had not made much progress.

BY PETER CAREY

Knight Ridder News Service

The levee system that protected New Orleans from hurricane-spawned surges along Lake Pontchartrain was never designed to survive a storm the size of Hurricane Katrina, the Army Corps of Engineers said Thursday.

The levees were built to withstand only a Category 3 storm, something projections suggested would strike New Orleans only once every two or three centuries, the commander of the corps, Lt. Gen. Carl A. Strock, told reporters during a conference call. Katrina was a Category 4 storm.

''Unfortunately, that occurred in this case,'' Strock said.

OLD TECHNOLOGY

Strock said the levee system's design was settled on a quarter of a century ago, before the current numerical system of classifying storms was in widespread use. He said studies had begun recently on strengthening the system to protect against Category 4 and 5 hurricanes, but hadn't progressed very far.

Strock said that despite a May report by the Corps' Louisiana district that a lack of federal funding had slowed construction of hurricane protection, nothing the Corps could have done recently would have prevented Katrina from flooding New Orleans.

''The levee projects that failed were at full project design and were not really going to be improved,'' Strock said.

`EVERYBODY KNEW'

Strock's comments drew immediate criticism from flood-protection advocates, who said that the Corps' May report was a call for action and a complaint about insufficient funding, and that no action took place.

''The Corps knew, everybody knew, that the levees had limited capability,'' said Joseph Suhayda, a retired director of the Louisiana State University's Water Resources and Research Institute.

''Because of exercises and simulations, we knew that the consequences of overtopping [water coming over the levees] would be disastrous. People were playing with matches in the fireworks factory and it went off,'' he said.

Suhayda, an expert in coastal oceanography, said, ``the fact the levee failed is not according to design. If it was overtopped, it's because it was lower in that spot than other spots. The fact that it was only designed for a Category 3 meant it was going to get overtopped. I knew that. They knew that. There were limits.''

NO SECURITY?

Some critics Thursday questioned the usefulness of levees, saying that all of them fail eventually.

''There are lots of ways for levees to fail. Overtopping is just one of them,'' said Michael Lindell, of Texas A&M University's Hazard Reduction and Recovery Center. 'There's a lot of smoke screen about `low probabilities.' Low probabilities just means 'Takes a long time.' ''

Strock said stopping the flow of water over the levees has proved to be ''a very challenging effort.'' Engineers have been unable to reach the levees and have had to draw up plans based only on observations from the air. ''We, too, are victims in this situation,'' he said.

In Louisiana, Army Corps officials said they hoped that one break, in what's known as the 17th Street Canal, might be closed by the end of Thursday, but that a second break in the London Avenue canal is proving more intractable.

Short sections of the walls that protected the city from Lake Pontchartrain caved in under storm surges, including an area that recently had been strengthened.

A fact sheet issued by the Corps in May said that seven construction projects in New Orleans had been stalled for lack of funding. It noted that the budget proposed by President Bush for 2005 was $3 million and called that amount insufficient to fund new construction contracts.

MONEY CRUNCH

''We could spend $20 million if the funds were provided,'' the fact sheet said. Two major pump stations needed to be protected against hurricane storm surges, the fact sheet said, but the budgets for 2005 and 2006 ``will prevent the corps from addressing these pressing needs.''

Acknowledging delays in construction, Corps officials in Louisiana said that those projects weren't where the failures occurred. ''They did not contribute to the flooding of the city,'' said Al Naomi, a senior project manager.

''The design was not adequate to protect against a storm of this nature,'' he said. ``We were not authorized to provide protection to Category 4 or 5 design.''

No matter where or how you live you have risks.  It could be a natural disaster such as tornadoes, floods, hurricanes, forest fires, earthquakes, mudslides, volcanoes, etc.  Or it could be man related such as crime, traffic accidents, air pollution, water pollution, etc.  New Orleans didn't just have a risk of some random future event that would affect a small percentage of the people.  They were actively fighting the water on a daily basis that threatened catastrophe for the majority of people living there.  They had no hope of holding things off for more than a few decades.  Read my post from a year ago.  They could not sustain the fight for much longer.  The Mississippi was/is depositing silt far, far faster than they could deal with it.  It was a huge expensive gamble either way.  To move the port to the natural location 100+ miles to the west or to stay.  Long term they have to move.  It might have been 20 or even 50 years before the wisdom of that decision would have been confirmed beyond any doubt.  But it would have been confirmed eventually.  

I said a year ago they should have quit the "game".  They should have packed up their stuff and left the playing field.  They should have dealt with reality on their own rather than having Mother Nature swat them out of the park with a clue-by-category-four.

Update: Michelle Malkin has another story on the levees from 1999 plus a fair amount of history on the topic.

Well... duh!  I couldn't have imagined a border guard that didn't have a gun while on duty.  Yet apparently they don't.  So a bunch of them walked off the job in protest:

OTTAWA, Sept 1 (Reuters) - More than 40 Canadian border guards walked off the job this week to demand they be issued with handguns, and a union official said on Thursday that others could follow suit unless Ottawa issues them with weapons.

The guards, worried by reports that a U.S. fugitive could be trying to cross into Canada, left their posts at crossings in Fort Erie and Niagara Falls, Ontario, on Wednesday, causing some delay to border traffic.

Canadian police are armed and the guards' union has been pressing for firearms for its members, saying they need better protection to do their jobs.

"Our members want to do the job of protecting the border but they need to properly protect themselves to do that," Ron Moran, head of the guards' union said in a statement.

"Until that happens, work refusals will likely reoccur."

A spokesman for Public Security Minister Anne McLellan, who has overall responsibility for border security, said a recent independent study showed there was no need to arm the guards.

"Arrangements are made with police to ensure that when an armed presence is needed, the police can be contacted to work with the border agents to address a situation," he said.

If the name Anne McLellan looks familar it's probably because she is the woman that implemented the $2 Billion boondoggle gun registry in Canada.

Joe, you're the gift that just keeps on giving.

Barb Scott
September 1, 2005
On Pacific Northwest National Laboratory "reconsidering" it's initial refusal to comply with Privacy Act and Freedom of Information Act requests for personnel file information on her husband, Joe Huffman.  Their "reconsideration" might have had something to do with certain "encouragement" Joe had been giving them via various "channels".

At 16:39 this afternoon I received a call from the person responsible for handling my FOIA/Privacy-Act information requests at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.  He said they had "reconsidered" my request for the rest of my personal file (or "Field File" as they prefer to call it) and it will go into the mail tomorrow.

Gee, I wonder what it was that caused them to "reconsider"?  I can only think of four different "blunt instruments" they might have seen coming their way that might have caused an "attitude adjustment" on their part.  I'll be checking on three of those "blunt instruments" tomorrow to see if any of them had something to do with it.  If all goes as planned I'll be able to share most of the results with everyone here sometime next week.

Barb had a rather apropos quip when she heard the news.  It will be the quote of the day tomorrow.

The title of this post is a near exact quote from the May 2005 Popular Science article.  I changed the quote slightly.  They said 'is' instead of 'was'.  At this point in time I figure New Orleans doesn't exist.  More quotes from the article:

It takes Scott Kiser only a split second to name the one city in the U.S., and probably the world, that would sustain the most catastrophic damage from a category-5 hurricane. "New Orleans," says Kiser, a tropical-cyclone program manager for the National Weather Service. "Because the city is below sea level—with the Mississippi River on one side and Lake Pontchartrain on the other—it is a hydrologic nightmare." The worst problem, he explains, would be a storm surge, a phenomenon in which high winds stack up huge waves along a hurricane’s leading edge. In New Orleans, a big enough surge would quickly drown the entire city.

...

Today, parts of New Orleans lie up to 20 feet below sea level, and the city is sinking at a rate of about nine millimeters a year. "This makes New Orleans the most vulnerable major city to hurricanes," says John Hall of the Army Corps of Engineers. "That’s because the water has to go down, not up, to reach it."

...

New Orleans has nearly completed its Hurricane Protection Project, a $740-million plan led by Naomi to ring the city with levees that could shield residents from up to category-3 storm surges. Meanwhile, Winer and others at the Army Corps are considering a new levee system capable of holding back a surge from a category-5 hurricane like Ivan, which threatened the city last year.

...

The category-5 levee idea, though, is still in the early planning stages; it may be decades before the new barriers are completed. Until then, locals had better keep praying to Helios.

Katrina was a category 4/5 storm.  I guess the locals didn't do enough praying and else figure out how to get out of town permanently months or years ago.  This wasn't any big surprise to the locals or anyone with a room temperature I.Q. that had studied the problem for more than a few minutes.

Barb and I will be donating some money to the relief effort and if someone knows of a volunteer organization helping with the Katrina mess that wants a middle aged guy with heavy equipment, computer, firearms, explosives, and/or farm-boy type skills--let me know.  I have some spare time on my hands right now.

From The Globe and Mail in Toronto:

Ontario to blitz gun shops

In an effort to stem a recent rash of gun violence in Toronto, the Ontario government announced it will begin conducting sweeps of gun shops to help reduce the number of illegal guns in the city.

"[We want] to ensure that we have safe standards in place," said the province's Attorney-General Michael Bryant at a press conference in Toronto Thursday.

However, Mr. Bryant said the sweep will be limited to businesses and not individual homes, as that is the purview of the federal government and the gun registry.

They are doing sweeps of the gun shops to reduce the number of illegal guns?  How about they "blitz" automobile dealerships to reduce the number of illegal cars on the roads?  Or tweaking one of my favorites, conduct raids on cosmetic stores to "stem the recent rash of prostitution" on the streets?

Give it up guys, you spent $2 Billion dollars on a failed gun registration system, and still you can't answer just this one question in the affirmative.  Harassing the gun store owners isn't going to be productive either.

A couple weeks ago I posted about a guy staying out in woods and damaging logging equipment.  The suspect is in the local county jail now.  I'm glad no one got hurt as it seemed likely at the time.  The suspect said he wanted to kill some cops.  I had done some brainstorming with my brother about this and hadn't come up with the solution they used although one would have thought that two electrical engineers would have been the first to thing of it.  From the Lewiston Morning Tribune:

Sheriff reels in Weippe suspect

By DAVID JOHNSON
of the Tribune

"He took the bait."

That's how Clearwater County Sheriff Alan Hengen Tuesday described the early morning arrest of 34-year-old David Pruss in the woods about one and a half miles northwest of Weippe.

"We knew he liked coffee."

Pruss, who'd been wanted for the better part of three months on a warrant for alleged malicious destruction of property and burglary, remained in the county jail at Orofino Tuesday night and could face additional charges, Hengen said.

The sheriff and his deputies had been chasing a suspect since early June who allegedly had shot up some logging equipment, broken into a number of cabins and buildings and otherwise eluded authorities.

Hengen said deputies learned that the suspect seemed to always steal coffee when he had a chance. So they placed a "signaling unit" in the bottom of a plastic can of coffee, and put the can in a building where the suspect had previously entered several times.

"We tried a lot of things, but that one worked," Hengen said. Within a week, the can of coffee was gone. Homing in on the signal from the coffee can, deputies were able to triangulate an approximate location, said Hengen, and Tuesday's predawn raid was organized. Two dog teams and 17 enforcement officers entered the forested area and closed in on the location, the sheriff said. They found a hut made of poles that were tied together and covered with pine boughs.

"We got him while he was sleeping," Hengen said. He said Pruss at first refused to come out of the hut and deputies used pepper spray. According to a press release from the sheriff's office, Pruss was "believed to have been reaching" for a Mac-90 assault rifle that was found underneath him. Hengen said a .357-caliber magnum revolver also was found.

"He had like a tent in there," Hengen said of the hut, which he described as about 6-feet square.

Deputies also found military and SWAT-type clothing, said Hengen, similar to clothing worn by a suspect that appears in a surveillance camera photo taken more than a month ago where logging equipment had been shot up. According to the press release, other items allegedly taken from the logging site were found where Pruss was arrested.

Pruss, formerly of Utah and Montana, came to Weippe about a year ago, according to residents in town. Authorities said he is thought to have ties to fringe militia groups. Hengen said earlier this month that he feared the suspect they were seeking was trying to lure his deputies into an ambush. According to the news release, Pruss "is believed to have told others his intent was to damage public infrastructure in order to lure Clearwater County Sheriff's Deputies into the woods for the purpose of picking them off."

Since the first week in June, Hengen's department had been investigating several burglaries and reports of property being destroyed. There had been damage to power transformers, phone pedestals, a small hydroelectric plant and the logging equipment, according to the news release. Several businesses and residences also had been burglarized, authorities said.

Total damage is estimated to have exceeded $100,000, Hengen said.

Weippe residents earlier this month voiced mixed thoughts about the suspect, some saying he was harmless and others expressing disgust that someone was shooting up logging equipment. Many people said they were locking their doors for the first time.

Hengen said the destruction of property seemed to trail off over the past few weeks and he thinks the suspect was "just trying to wait us out." Most of the logging equipment that had been damaged belonged to Kenneth Miller, whose equipment and vehicles had been located at a site in the Winters Creek area near Weippe.

In addition to sheriff deputies, Hengen said U.S. Forest Service personnel and members of Clearwater County Search and Rescue participated in numerous searches for the suspect.

Authorities ask that anyone finding more hut-like structures in the woods around Weippe call the sheriff's office and stay away from the structures. The same goes for any equipment, clothing or other stored items that might be found.

Okay, the computer just helped.  With numerous cameras both above and below the water of the swimming pool it detected a little girl had sunk to the bottom and wasn't moving.  It alerted the lifeguard who pulled her from the water less than 40 seconds later.  She has recovered.  The article is interesting, but the pictures are what really grabbed me.  Here is one just before the lifeguard grabs her:

I was reading some of the comments on the Wal-Mart shooting story.  I can't imagine the mindset this person must have:

By Roy Salazar (Submitted: 08/31/2005 9:03 pm )

The truth of the fact is, Mr. Moore killed a person from the side lines and that is not "self-defense"..., I call the murder. Mr. Moore should be prosecuted for the point blank murder of Mr. vigil and the ex-wife of Mr Vigil should be prosecuted for party to crime. An eye for eye is not justice in this country ( thats dark-age justice ). We have laws and we ( we, means all of us, the people ) should follow them. Otherwise, we are using double standards in the law and orders of the country. Furthermore, Wal-Mart should fire MS. Ex-wife for taking garbage to her work station and indangering the lifes of others.

Blaming the victim and the rescuer... It boggles my mind.  This cannot be a rational person.  It must be this is type of person that would send money to the VPC.

It starts out with the Wal-Mart shooting and gets better from there.  From Jewish World Review:

UCLA professor emeritus James Q. Wilson, a respected expert on crime, police practices and guns, says, "We know from Census Bureau surveys that something beyond a hundred thousand uses of guns for self-defense occur every year. We know from smaller surveys of a commercial nature that the number may be as high as two-and-a-half or three million. We don't know what the right number is, but whatever the right number is, it's not a trivial number."

...

A gunned-down bleeding guy creates news. A man who spared his family by brandishing a handgun, well, that's just water-cooler chat.

He gets all the facts right and he introduces them without it being just a bunch of numbers.  It's an excellent piece.

Dogs wear collars, wolves do not.  I am a wolf.  You can shoot me, trap me, poison me - even set my brother the dog on me. But you can not pat my damn head unless I say so.

Jay Loveless
1995